While there is a vague awareness among many Americans about a place in Africa known as Darfur, and some Americans know that it is in Sudan, relatively few know that Darfur was once a powerful, independent state.
Geography:
Geographically, there are four basic features of Darfur’s physical geography. The eastern half of Darfur is covered with plains and low hills of sandy soils (known as goz) and sandstone hills. The goz is waterless and is suitable for habitation only where there are water reservoirs or boreholes. To the north of the goz are the desert sands of the Sahara Desert.
One of the features of western Darfur are the wadis: these include seasonal watercourses that flood occasionally during the wet season and large wadis that flood during most of the rains and flow hundreds of miles west to Lake Chad. The wadis have soils which are difficult to cultivate.
The third geographic feature of Darfur is the basement rock, sometimes covered with a thin layer of sandy soil. This feature is dominant in western Darfur. Basement rock is infertile and thus provides no opportunity for farming.
The fourth geographic feature of Darfur is the Marrah Mountains. These are volcanic plugs. At Deriba crater there is a small amount of temperate climate with high rainfall and permanent springs of water.
Civilizations:
Very little is known about the first humans to inhabit Darfur. Little archaeology has been done in the region because of the warfare and political instability during the past few decades. By 10,000 BCE, Darfur had some scattered populations. The semi-arid nature of the region makes it difficult to support a large and complex civilization.
The first Darfurian civilization developed in the Marrah Mountains where there was plentiful water. It was here that the Daju people developed a kingdom about 2500 BCE. The Daju probably traded with Egypt. Other than a list of their kings, we know little about this kingdom.
There is some indication that the rulers of Cush (also spelled Kush) may have established an early dynasty in Darfur. Cush fell about 350 CE. There are also indications that some Christian kingdoms emerged between 900 and 1300.
Muhammad al-Idrisi was a Muslim geographer, cartographer, Egyptologist who had been born in Spain and lived in Sicily. Writing in 1154, he was the first author to provide any detailed information on the region. He describes the Tajuwa as pagans who inhabit the region adjacent to the Nile Valley kingdoms. According to al-Idrisi they have two towns: Tajuwa (the capital) and Samna. He reports that Samna was destroyed by the Nubians. Al-Idrisi describes the inhabitants of the region as nomads who have large herds of cattle and camels and are often raided by their neighbors.
In the fourteenth century, the Tunjur displaced the Daju and introduced Islam. The Egyptian historian al-Maqrizi, writing about 1400, describes the Tunjur kingdom, Taju, as a powerful kingdom lying between Kanem and the Nile kingdoms.
The Tunjur reached Darfur through Dornu and Wadai. Ahmed el-Makur was the first Tunjur king of Darfur. He married the daughter of the last Daju king and reduced many chiefs to submission. Under his rule, Darfur prospered.
The Tunjur sultans intermarried with the Fur, a major kingdom which had been established in the fifteenth century. The Sultan Dali, the great-grandson of Ahmed el-Makur and the son of a Fur woman, was able to bring the dynasty closer to the people it ruled. Sultan Dali divided the country into provinces and established a penal code. This code, Kitab Dali (Dali’s Book) is still preserved and differs in some respects from Quranic law.
Sultan M. Solaiman, who reigned from 1603 to 1637, founded the Keira dynasty. Under the Keira dynasty, Darfur became a great power and expanded its borders as far east as the Atbarah River. Solaiman’s grandson, Ahmed Bukr, made Islam the official religion of Darfur. He increased the prosperity of the country by encouraging immigration from Bornu and Barimi.
By the mid-eighteenth century, Darfur was wracked by a civil war between rival factions. With the death of Buhkr in 1722, there was conflict over the succession. On his deathbed, Buhkr indicated that he wanted each of his sons to rule in turn. However, once on the throne, each of his sons wanted to make his son the heir.
In addition to the conflicts among Buhkr’s sons, Darfur was involved in a war with the Sennar and Wadai. In 1785-1786, Sultan Mohammed Terab, one of Ahmad Buhkr’s sons, managed to unify the country and led the army to the banks of the Nile River. Here their military campaign stalled and, with the encouragement of the chiefs, his wife poisoned him. The throne then went to his brother Abd al-Rahman.
In 1790, Abd al-Rahman, known as The Just, established a capital at Al Fashir. Previously, the capital have moved around. In 1799, Abd al-Rahman, wrote to congratulate Napoleon Bonaparte on his success in Egypt. Bonaparte replied by asking the sultan to send him 2,000 strong and vigorous slaves.
Sultan Adb al-Rahman was followed by his son Mohammed el-Fahdi who was initially under the control of an energetic eunuch, Mohammed Kura. During his reign, he sought to subjugate the Arab tribes in the region, most notably the Rizeigat, whom he slaughtered by the thousands. By the time he died of leprosy in 1838, Darfur had lost the province of Kordofan to the Egyptians under Mehemet Ali.
With the death of al-Rahman, Mohammed Hassan, one of his forty sons, assumed the throne. Hassan is described as a very religious man, but at the same time somewhat avaricious. When he went blind in 1856, his sister Zamzam became the de facto ruler of Darfur until Hassan died in 1873.
Finally, in 1875, the kingdom was destroyed by the Egyptians. In 1898, Darfur became a semiautonomous sultanate under Anglo-Egyptian suzerainty. During World War I, at a time when the British feared that Muslim Darfur would ally themselves with the Ottoman Empire, the sultan attempted to expel the foreign colonizers. The British annexed Darfur and incorporated it into Sudan.
This diary was originally posted on Street Prophets